or DSP environment, and the recordings for these projects are available forfree from the author.BackgroundThe FFT and filter design are two fundamental techniques in DSP. Showing the students someexamples of how these techniques can be used in practice can help motivate them to learn themathematical theory. Some DSP courses incorporate laboratory experiments1,2,3, some useMATLAB/Simulink projects4,5,6, and some use web-based environments7. The projectsdescribed below are used in the author’s undergraduate DSP lecture course, which has a coursein signals and systems as the prerequisite. Some of the projects are assigned as part of ahomework assignment and some of them are standalone projects. The goal of the projects is toincrease the
thestudents the lesson notes relating to that particular class and has discussions about the concept orconcepts of the day. Typically, there might be some mathematical work involved but this is notalways the case. At the second meeting of the class, students are given laboratory work, led by ateaching assistant, which most times include the creation of physical circuits or the simulation ofthe circuit in order to test for expected values. These measured values are then used to provevalues that were previous calculated outside of the class. The basic requirement is that studentscomplete all class activities in the time allotted as well the completion of all assigned laboratory
learn. It can be very helpful to motivate the studentsby showing how the material is used in real systems. Simulations are an effective and easilydeployed method, but they do not have as direct connection to the real world as real systems.However most real communication systems are very complex, and it is often difficult to utilizethem in a class. Some laboratory experiments have been based on the USRP because they can beused to build communication systems that run in real-time without the need for building lowlevel hardware and software1,2.The USRP is an open source hardware platform provided by Ettus Research3. It converts radiofrequency (RF) signals to digital signals that can be processed by a computer, and also convertsdigital signals from
2007 2008 Year Number of Responses 2 2 3 3 2Related Survey Question Pos Neg Pos Neg Pos Neg Pos Neg Pos Neg PEO 1 My education provided the up-to-date theory 1 1 2 0 3 0 3 0 2 0 necessary for my professional advancement 1 My education provided the up-to-date laboratory 0 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 experience necessary for my professional advancement 2 My education influenced my ability to remain current 1 0 2 0 3 0 2
Undergraduate curriculum flow [From [5], © 2007ASEE] The enrollment in the senior elective sequence shown in Figure 1 varies annually, rangingfrom as few as 5 or 6 students to as many as 15 to 17 students. The Microwave Engineeringcourse emphasizes passive microwave passive circuit design and utilizes chapters 2-8 and part ofChapter 10 of reference7. These topics include • Transmission Line Theory and Impedance Matching; • N-port Network Theory; • Physical Transmission Lines • Microwave Power Directivity; and • Microwave and RF System concepts introduction The Microwave Engineering course includes weekly laboratories where students performbasic microwave measurements using traditional microwave laboratory equipment (slotted
range of potential applicability to students at many different levels – from freshman thru tograduate students.The toolbox has only recently been developed, and will be used for the first time in Spring 2011in a senior-level Machine Learning course. Students will implement a genetic algorithm toenable a spider-like robot to learn how to walk. It is also intended to use the toolbox in a senior- Page 22.1516.8level Automatic Controls course where the students will stabilize a Segway-like mobile invertedpendulum. Further work will be required to assess the learning benefits of these curriculainnovations and to develop additional laboratory modules
previous papers, the method presented in this paper does not limit thestudents to work on the same problem or specify an exact project. Students normally pursue thetopics based on their interests such as music, games, or wireless devices. We have applied thiscompetition style to the course ENGR 460: Embedded Systems, offered at UT Martin since2007, and is intended for third year electrical engineering students.While the course is still composed of lecture, laboratory, homework, and midterm exam, the finalproject is the key part to stimulating their learning experience. After half of a semester, studentsare required to work on a final project, as an individual or a team, for the remainder of thesemester. They apply the concepts they learned in the
content, the course is also designed to serve asthe first in a two-course sequence for electrical engineering majors, for whom the second coursewill cover topics that were either omitted or merely introduced in the first course.This paper includes information such as the course prerequisites, description, outline, lecturecoverage highlights, and outcomes. A brief discussion of the rationale for topicinclusion/exclusion is provided. The paper also includes information about the content of thecourse’s concurrent laboratory component, such as lab titles and outcomes. A student survey isanalyzed to provide a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of the course.Mechatronics EngineeringMechatronics engineering is a relatively new degree program
Paper ID #7754Sophomore-Level Curriculum Innovation in Electrical and Computer Engi-neeringDr. Cordelia M Brown, Purdue University, West Lafayette Cordelia M. Brown is an Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Engineering Education at Purdue University. She received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Vanderbilt Univer- sity, her M.S. in Electrical Engineering at Vanderbilt University, and her B.S. in Electrical Engineering at Tuskegee University. Her research interests include assessment of instructional methods, laboratory design, collaborative learning, and retention and recruitment issues in
alligator clips to make free-form circuits because it was believed this would help the students visualize the circuits and also because of the lower cost. Breadboards were used in the laboratories, and it was observed that students had difficulty visualizing the physical connections in the
Paper ID #21119Automated Formation of Peer-learning Cohorts Using Computer-based As-sessment Data: A Double-blind Study within a Software Engineering CourseDr. Ronald F. DeMara P.E., University of Central Florida Ronald F. DeMara is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Central Florida where he has been a faculty member since 1992. His educational research interests focus on classroom and laboratory instructional technology, and the digitization of STEM assessments. He has completed roughly 225 technical and educational publications, 43 funded projects as PI/Co-PI, and es- tablished two
communications,and senior capstone design project courses, teaching laboratories and projects helpedimprove student participation, got the students actively involved and excited about theprojects and the material being taught, motivated the students to better master coursecontent and taught the students to learn to think and reason more clearly, accurately,relevantly, logically, rationally, ethically and responsibly.This paper discusses how the judicious, sensible and affable use of the Socratic Methodin the aforementioned educational settings facilitated the development of students whoare learning to possess the basic skills of thought and reasoning such as the ability to:identify, formulate and clarify questions; gather relevant data; identify key
college students to expose and increase their interest in pursuing Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. For over a decade now, Dr. Astatke has facilitated the donation of 250+ Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) portable laboratory instrumentation boards and has conducted capacity-building training workshops for five universities in Ethiopia. This work has improved the education of thousands of ECE students in Ethiopia annually. He has expanded his services to other African countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, and Cameroon. Dr. Astatke is recipient of several awards, including the 2016 Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC)-Airbus Diversity Award, 2016 Black Engineer of the Year
summer camps geared towards middle school, high school, and community college students to expose and increase their inter- est in pursuing Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Dr. Astatke travels to Ethiopia every summer to provide training and guest lectures related to the use of the mobile laboratory technology and pedagogy to enhance the ECE curriculum at five different universities.Prof. Kenneth A Connor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Kenneth Connor is a professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering (ECSE) where he teaches courses on electromagnetics, electronics and instrumentation, plasma physics, electric power, and general engineering. His research
university, with attendance of over 300+ members, in a 1200square foot space, and is staffed with skilled technicians. Students work one-on-one or in a smallgroup with a technician which allows them to collaborate and develop their teamwork andtechnical skills. Classes can consist of training on various pieces of laboratory equipment,soldering skills, microcontroller implementations, practical electronic components, PCB design,and much more. Once a student has gone through training on the equipment, they are able to useit for their projects, coursework, or research. The classes build on each other to provide acontinuous learning environment that can rapidly build student confidence in being able to tackleengineering problems. By integrating the
TxDataReg Tx 0x08 16 Word StatusReg Tx FIFO 0x0C ControlRegFigure 8: Xilinx OPB UART Lite CoreIn addition to the cores just discussed, Interrupt Controller, External Memory Controller andSerial Peripheral Interface cores are also presented in class. Students complete a final designproject in lab in which they are required to use a new core, use a prior core in a new mode, ordevelop their own core. The use of soft cores in the laboratory and the closeness to the hardwareimplementation required by memory mapping cores
Architectures, and Low Power and Reliability-Aware VLSI circuits. He has also been a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) for Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of UCF from 2014 to 2018. His educational interests are innovations and laboratory-based instructions, technology-enabled learning, and feedback driven grading approaches. He is the recipient of the Award of Excellence by a GTA for the academic year of 2015-2016 at UCF.Dr. Ramtin Zand, University of Central Florida Ramtin Zand received B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering in 2010 from IKIU, Iran. He received his M.Sc. degree in Digital Electronics from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2012. He is a Ph.D. Candidate in
minimum, core essentials in order to allow time for depth of exploration and engagement in labs and projects. As a result of trying to cover too many topics, in- class demonstrations and labs were only offered periodically due to time constraints, even though they were found to be extremely worthwhile. ● There is disparity among personnel regarding preparedness to teach an integrated lab course as well as the depth of content required. Faculty buy-in of laboratory-style teaching is a must. The recommendations for future iterations of this and subsequent courses in this series involve setting the stage for a laboratory-style course both through the design of
education has been discussed8); (c) Developing a respective multi-disciplinary laboratory for both research and teaching of hardware/software security; and (d) Advancing education through inter- and intra-university research collaborations (it is noted that the authors of this work are from different and diverse backgrounds).We note that a cryptographic system was chosen for deeply-embedded security integration ofresearch and teaching for a number of reasons: (a) efficient and practical use of cryptographywill be one of the major schemes in providing security in future deeply-embedded systems and(b) the cryptographic architectures are modular thus dividing the tasks in performing research orinstructing in multiple independent
create a breadth-first introductory course to motivate and inspire the students to dig deeper into topics they will see later in the curriculum. Through early exposure to a broad set of knowledge and simulation/laboratory techniques, students can begin to develop intellectual curiosity and intuition about how electrical and computer systems work and, in the process, see the fun and excitement in electrical and computer engineering. This paper delves into the development of the course, from the determination of the goals through the implementation of the course structure and teaching philosophy. The paper concludes with an analysis of student feedback.1.0 IntroductionA lesser known corollary to Murphy’s Law for Engineers states
Paper ID #9901Development of a Fundamentals of Electrical and Computing Systems coursefor in-service K-12 Teachers.Prof. Kundan Nepal, University of St. Thomas Kundan Nepal is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of St.Thomas (MN). His research interests span the areas of reliable nanoscale digital systems, mobile robotics and recongurable computingMr. Andrew Tubesing, University of St. Thomas Andrew Tubesing is Laboratory Manager for the Electrical Engineering program at University of St Thomas in St. Paul, MN. He also serves on the faculty of the UST Center for Pre-Collegiate
not been able to follow studentsthrough multiple years. We have also implemented our own department-wide writing class andwill be developing templates for a number of other types of writing. Finally, we will beexperimenting with better ways to have TAs provide electronic feedback to the students, andtracking the changes they make to their writing as a result of these comments.Acknowledgements:The design of these laboratories was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant0431958.Bibliography1. Alyssa Magleby, Cynthia Furse. “Improving Communication Skills Through Project-Based Learning.” IEEEAntennas and Propagation Systems Magazine. Submitted for publication.2. Cynthia Furse. Personal Communication. January 2008.3
do an acceptable job in the analog course they wouldoften express displeasure regarding the level of rigor required by the course. It was suspectedthat the calculus content of this first course dealt a blow making the material somewhat abstract.Plus, the course had no laboratory, so the only exposure to signals problems was “on paper.”Four years ago the EE program was changed significantly1,2 to a model that includes teachingmaterial on an as-needed basis. For example, we teach the ideal op amp topic to freshmen,delaying the details of the internal workings to a later course. The freshmen could then see theutility of, and use in simple designs, a powerful circuit tool.Another change was to institute DSP as a required course, and to be taught
development of hands-on learning materials since 2003. Page 14.960.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2009 Podcast Tutorials on PSpice and Lab-in-a-BoxAbstractAn approach has been developed to provide students with 24-hour access to multimedia tutorialsfrom a department website using a readily available means to distribution – podcasts. Tutorialshave been developed to cover select topics in PSpice as well as to address issues commonlyencountered when using the hardware and the software oscilloscope used in an introductorycircuits lab course, which is not taught in the traditional classroom laboratory environment
to see the addition of these experiments to clarify and show theapplication of the theory in these courses.As per the alumni letters, the described projects and their interpretation are very helpful to theworking graduate students, and they could apply some of the demonstrated ideas in theircompany. Some of the students joined electromagnetic compatibility laboratories with theknowledge reinforced by the experiments. The employer letters indicate that our alumni haveused the knowledge gained from these experiments in the industry to rectify many of theproblems in the design.Thanks to the introduction of the experiments in the class, the enrollment in the course doubledfrom the previous years since the students find the course more
Paper ID #18235Project-Based Learning Curriculum for the Junior Year Based on Building aLaser Tag SystemProf. Brad L. Hutchings, Brigham Young University Brad L. Hutchings received the PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Utah in 1992. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Brigham Young University. In 1993, Dr. Hutchings established the Laboratory for Reconfigurable Logic at BYU and currently serves as its head. His research interests are custom computing, embedded systems, FPGA architectures, CAD, and VLSI. He has published numerous papers on
focus on boards featuring products fromthese two vendors. While Actel and Lattice are alternate options, there are more resourcesavailable for Xilinx and Intel PSG for faculty members. Some key aspects of PLD development board selection covered in this paper include thefollowing. • Contribution to student learning outcomes – Does the board contain all the components needed to complete the laboratory assignments? • PLD vendor – Does one want to use Xilinx with ISE/Vivado, or Intel PSG with Quartus? • Existing materials available – Are there existing lesson plans or laboratory assignments available? • Cost – How cost sensitive? Is this something purchased by the department or students? • Time – How much time is traded
the supervision of Professor Neal Cason. In 1999 Mr. Tatar presented a paper on Groups and Representation Theory and was awarded a MS degree in Applied Mathematics. A year later, he completed a dissertation on Hadron Spectroscopy of Light Mesons and earned a PhD in Experimental Particle Physics. Dr. Tatar joined the faculty of Idaho State University in August 2001, where he remains until now. Dr. Tatar’s scientific interests are in experimental and phenomenological studies of strong and weak interactions and the possible extensions of the Standard Model. He was a member of the team that discovered the first mesons with exotic quantum numbers, after analyzing a large data set from Brookhaven National Laboratory. His
geared towards middle school, high school, and community college students to expose and increase their interest in pursuing Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Dr. Astatke travels to Ethiopia every summer to provide training and guest lectures related to the use of the mobile laboratory technology and pedagogy to enhance the ECE curriculum at five different universities.Dr. Charles J. Kim, Howard University Charles Kim is a professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Howard University. He received a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University in 1989, and worked as a researcher c American Society for Engineering Education, 2016
the circuit with PSpice.4. Using the oscilloscope and the trigger single function measure and record the transient phenomenon of voltage build-up across the capacitor. Be sure to include a printout of the data captured from the scope in your laboratory notebook. Use cursors and scope measurements and displays to experimentally extract all relevant parameters.5. Compare your experimental results with your calculations and discuss errors or discrepancies.Most students performing these tasks for the prelab come with an analytic solution that matches Page 26.136.2their PSpice simulation; both indicate that the system response is heavily